EU sus­pends Colom­bia’s FARC from ter­ror list

THE Euro­pean Union said yes­ter­day it had sus­pended Colom­bia’s FARC rebel group from its ter­ror list fol­low­ing the of­fi­cial sign­ing of a peace ac­cord be­tween the left­ist rebel force and the Columbian gov­ern­ment.

The Revo­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia (FARC) was added to the EU ter­ror list in 2002. The list de­tails the “per­sons, groups and en­ti­ties in­volved in ter­ror­ist acts and sub­ject to re­stric­tive mea­sures”.

Its sus­pen­sion came into force fol­low­ing the his­toric sign­ing of the peace agree­ment on Septem­ber 26 in a cer­e­mony in the colo­nial city of Cartagena. The move will have a sig­nif­i­cant prac­ti­cal im­pact, an EU of­fi­cial told AFP.

“The ef­fect of the sus­pen­sion is that the FARC will re­main on the list of ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties, but the re­stric­tive mea­sures [as­set-freeze and pro­hi­bi­tion on mak­ing funds avail­able] will stop ap­ply­ing,” the of­fi­cial said.

“As a con­se­quence, EU per­sons and en­ti­ties will be able to pro­vide fund­ing to mem­bers of the FARC as part of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the peace process.”

The sanc­tions will be sus­pended for a pe­riod of six months, af­ter which they will be re­viewed. –